The main aim of this blog is to interpret the Christian Order in the light of current affairs, philosophy, literature and the arts -- and vice versa. So it's about ideas. Social, political and religious comment. Links, notes on people, places, events, books, movies etc.
And mainly a place where I can post half-baked ideas in the hope that other people, or the passing of time, will help me to bake them.

09 January 2011

Last year Julius Malema (whom some refer to as Kiddi Amin) of the ANC Youth League was criticised for singing a song described in the media as "Kill the boer, kill the farmer". And shortly after the controversy AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche was killed on his farm, and a couple of his farm workers were charged with murder. Some said, and others implied, that Malema's singing of the song incited them. I'd still like to know the actual words of the song, and whether they do say what the media report them as saying.

But now a similar controversy has broken out about American politician Sarah Palin, who seems inclined to shoot off her mouth in loose cannon fashion as much as Julius Malema.

She posted a map on her Facebook page, showing gunsights aimed at a map with several American politicians that she wanted taken out, electorally, one hopes. But now one of them, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, has been taken out, literally, by gunfire, and Sarah Palin, like Julius Malema, is being accused of inciting this with her target map.

There is often a big gap between rhetoric and reality, and sometimes people say things metaphorically that they do not mean to be taken literally, yet there are often people who do take them literally. And now the Facebook page is full of accusations against Sarah Palin similar to those made against Julius Malema last year when Eugene Terreblanche was killed.

Former Anglican Dean of Johannesburg, Gonville Aubey ffrench-Beytagh once remarked, after hearing of some KGB-type behaviour by Special Branch big-shot Brigadier "Rooi Rus" Swanepoel, that "the man should be shot".

He didn't know that the server to whom he made this casual remark in the vestry after Mass was an SB spy, and he was charged under the Terrorism Act.

On the other hand there was the English monarch who said, in similar exasperation, "who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" and some of his hangers-on took him at his word.

Orthodox Christian mission and missiology

New Religious Movements

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